IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/rfinst/v21y2008i4p1797-1832.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Theory of Board Control and Size

Author

Listed:
  • Milton Harris
  • Artur Raviv

Abstract

This article presents a model of optimal control of corporate boards of directors. We determine when one would expect inside versus outside directors to control the board, when the controlling party will delegate decision-making to the other party, the extent of communication between the parties, and the number of outside directors. We show that shareholders can sometimes be better off with an insider-controlled board. We derive endogenous relationships among profits, board control, and the number of outside directors that call into question the usual interpretation of some documented empirical regularities. (JEL G34) The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org., Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Milton Harris & Artur Raviv, 2008. "A Theory of Board Control and Size," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(4), pages 1797-1832, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:21:y:2008:i:4:p:1797-1832
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rfs/hhl030
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:21:y:2008:i:4:p:1797-1832. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfsssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.